Southwest had to cancel flights because of a computer bug. (Charles Rex Arbogast)

(Newser)
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A system-wide computer failure forced Southwest Airlines to ground its entire fleet of airplanes preparing for departures late yesterday, and at least 57 flights had to be canceled even after service was fully restored hours later. A spokesman said 43 of the cancellations were flights scheduled for departures last night in the western half of the United States. The others were flights scheduled for this morning scattered across the US. An estimated 250 flights—most of them on the West Coast—were grounded at least temporarily last night. The glitch impaired the airline's ability to do such things as conduct check-ins, print boarding passes, and monitor the weight of each aircraft. (American Airlines knows the feeling.)

I never fly Southwurst because of their unassigned seat policy. I go the extra steps to pick the seat I want and wind up paying a little extra for it. Right now, I use Frontier because they don't charge for carry on bags. I also take the cheaper of either Delta or Frontier. Southwest is NEVER cheaper for the flights I search for my travel. But I have also done 37 days of Enterprise rental cars this year due to our change in travel policy at work. If we can, we rent a car and do not do air travel.

julianpenrod

Jun 22, 2013 5:06 PM CDT

P { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } The program of doping the atmosphere with weather control chemicals from high flying jets, what has come to be called “chemtrails”, has been responsible for enormous changes in the world's weather. The program began around 1950, when jet flight became commonplace; it was first announced in 1997, because that was the year the air apparently became so saturated with chemicals that any new contributions precipitated out to non dissipating, long lasting vapor trails. Chemtrails have presided over, among other things, the number of tornadoes per year skyrocketing from a constant 180 before 1950 to as much as seven times that number or more now. They have also caused the largest year-to-year drop in Arctic sea ice coverage; the occurrence of tornadoes where they were previously unknown, like Brooklyn; the worst hurricane season on record; the disappearance of bees; the National Weather Service having to recalculate wind chill to reflect the fact that air now carries much more heat than it used to; the arrival of unprecedented hundred mile per hour straight line wind storms called “super derechos”; the development of the previously non existent cloud species the cirrus intortus in 1950; the development of the previously non existent cloud species the undulatus asperatus in about 2005. It is chemtrails that caused climate change not fossil fuels. Among the most egregious effects is air losing the ability to support aircraft. It began about six or seven years ago with spates of three weeks or so when crashes were a daily or every other day event, with spans of a few months between. The spates got longer and the separations shorter. Now, it seems, there isn't a moment when the earth's atmosphere doesn't contain many patches of denatured air. Commercial airlines need to find ways to avoid flying into them. Cancellations and delays are rampant. Accidents, malfunctions, incidents on the ground, preventing jets taking off, or in the air, forcing “diversions” are at unprecedented levels. Never before did a pilot refuse to take off because a young man on board was wearing low cut jeans that exposed his underwear; never before did a pilot decide to take off even though a part was broken, then suddenly decide not to take off because the part needed to be replaced; never before did a flight “overshoot its destination” because pilots aboard “were pre occupied”! Strikes, glitches, air traffic controllers being laid off. All excuses to avoid encountering unnatural patches of atmosphere. If this continues, soon, no one but the rich, powerful and governmentally armed will be allowed to fly in the non aerodynamic diamond shaped or triangular drones being reported seen.

Richard_A_Ga

Jun 22, 2013 8:46 AM CDT

This same thing happened to me twice in 3 weeks on flights in another country. The either the server or the computer terminals at the check-in stations for the flights I was taking crashed. The airline could not issue boarding passes, check-in luggage, do seat assignments. In one case the flight was delayed 3 hours, but I was going to a single destination. In the other case, the flight was delayed 4 hours, but because there were four legs on the itinerary, I missed connections at every other point. The four hour computer delay resulted in my travel time being increased more than 12 hours. At no time did anyone from the airlines give any explanation. At least in the USA, they are supposed to tell you what is going on. The really stupid thing about this kind of breakdown is that it isn't safety related. The planes could fly, but because there is no backup method for issuing boarding passes and checking in luggage, it brings down the entire airline schedule. So stupid in over-reliance on the belief that computers are 100% reliable.